Dear Friends,

Advent and Christmas 2024

This newsletter comes with greetings for the Advent and Christmas seasons as we prepare to celebrate the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

The special seasonal highlights start on Sunday 22nd December with our Carols by Candlelight at 6pm. This service, on the traditional format of Lessons and Carols, is really a curtain raiser for this holy season. In words and music we celebrate the growing revelation of God to humanity through prophets and in the birth of his Incarnate Son of The Virgin Mary. The candles graphically remind us of the birth of the Light of the World, a world that often seems dark.

5pm Christmas Eve sees our annual Crib service and Nativity Tableau involving local children in the Nativity. They are assisted by real shepherds with their sheep and a patient donkey. Many thanks if you or your children are taking part this year. Christmas Carols and readings complete the seasonal theme. We are still looking for some more children to take part in this Nativity Tableau, so, parents, please contact myself or Gavin Kenny if your child is interested, without delay.

Then, there being no Midnight Mass this year, on Christmas morning at 10am, we have the Sung Eucharist of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is always a joyful occasion which celebrates one of the great feasts of the Christian Church. It’s a great joy to “salute this happy morn whereon the Saviour of the world was born,” in the words of the hymn. It’s very special moment in the year, a day to receive Holy Communion and a day to recall with faith the Incarnation of the Word made Flesh, one of the central beliefs of Christianity.

Another day when the meaning of this season is unfolded is the Naming of Jesus on Wednesday 1st January with a Eucharist at 12 noon. How better to begin a new year than in Church with the name of Jesus on our lips? Then on Sunday 5th January the 10am Eucharist will tell again of the visit of the Three Wise Men to the Infant Christ-the Epiphany.

Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany all in their own way help us each year to prayerfully be caught up in the mystery of the Word becoming flesh for us, God entering our world, not in judgment, but in a desire to restore humanity and renew the face of the Earth. All of our services in their own way help us be moved and touched by God’s act of love and to respond in celebration, prayer and renewed respect for the humanity which God came to save and restore.

I wish you all a happy and peaceful Christmas and New Year.

Your friend and parish priest

Chris